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©2002 Artists Rights Society, NY/ADAGP, Paris/Photo Gerard Blot/Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

“I found my only love. I held him, I would not let him go until I brought him to my mother’s house, into my mother’s room,” the bride sings after combing the city streets for her missing lover (Song of Songs 3:4). Angels blow trumpets, a fish-bird spins about in a frenzy and a horse carries the wedding bouquet, as the city celebrates the lovers’ wedding, in Marc Chagall’s 1958 oil painting “The Song of Songs IV.”

Soaring above Jerusalem on the winged horse, the couple is released from society’s constraints, which, in the poem, prohibit them from embracing in public.